Shank My Heart
by fjdkjfsklafadjks
Summary: AU. He'd shoved her into the back of his hearse, not even bothering to clean the blood that had now crusted to her neck. She could no longer lie to herself. Her boyfriend, sweet and sarcastic Elijah Goldsworthy, was a murderer. Dark!Eli. EClare.


a/n: Uh, howdy folks! I'm not as proud as I'd hoped to be with the first chapter of this story, but I decided to post it anyway. Besides, there's no place to go but up, right?

**Warnings: **Eli will not be fluffy in this story! While I don't think he's so bad yet, he will get progressively worse in each chapter. He will be abusive, pointlessly cruel, and not hesitate to kill anyone who stands in his way. He's - well - batshit crazy. Just don't tell him that or he'll slit your throat open. (;

**Disclaimer: **If I owned Degrassi, do you really think that I'd be writing fanfiction? No, no, no.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

* * *

><p>"Aw, don't you two look cute."<p>

Clare looked up from where she had been quietly arguing with Eli, her blue eyes flashing in fear. Somehow, she'd always known that it would end this way. Her boyfriend (the word still sounded so foreign) didn't know when to back down from a fight, even if it could cost him his life. Now, thanks to his lack of control, they were going to die in this hallway. She looked down at the white tiles beneath her feet, grimacing. It would take some unlucky soul years to scrub their blood off the floor. She would probably feel worse about that if she wasn't so terrified at the moment.

"F-Fitz…" Clare said, stuttering like the timid little girl that she always told herself she wasn't. This time was different, though. She didn't know any sane person who wouldn't be terrified when faced with a knife, especially one that glinted so horrifyingly in the darkness. She stole a glance at Eli. Of course he didn't look scared in the slightest. He was _crazy._ "Don't do this, please."

Fitz's coal black eyes barely even flickered towards her, "Shut up, bitch!"

Clare's mouth fell open but nothing came out. She licked her lips, realizing how dry they were. She thought of the cherry lip balm that was safely nestled away in her locker. She'd put some on this morning, knowing how much that Eli liked the taste of it. Had that been the last time that she would ever apply it? Was she going to die with chapped lips? She briefly remembered hearing something about how you always thought of the strangest things before you died. Maybe that could explain the weird things that were running through her head at the moment. Proofreading his stories in the back of the hearse. Sipping caramel mochas together at The Dot while they worked on math homework. Little things.

Eli pushed Clare out of his way as Fitz lunged towards them, blade clutched in his hands. He dodged at the very last second, the knife missing the boy's stomach by inches and instead plunging into the wall behind him. Fitz blinked his eyes in oafish surprise. Things weren't going as planned…

Clare wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but she was smart enough to know that the worst part wasn't over yet.

Eli's head tipped back as he let out a chuckle. His green eyes seemed to sparkle even more so than usually, but this time they were filled with some sort of sadistic glee. "Nice aim, Fitzy boy," He sniggered, but his happiness ended too quickly for it to have been genuine. He pulled the knife effortlessly from the wall, turning to face the increasingly fearful bully in front of him. "But now it's my turn."

Without another second of suspense, Eli grabbed Fitz's shoulder to steady himself and stabbed the knife into the boy's neck. He fell to the ground immediately, the blood quickly gathering in a pool around him as he squirmed and twitched. While it seemed to go on for hours, it was really only a few seconds before he finally grew still beneath them.

Fitz was dead.

Eli licked his lips, "Spot on."

Clare hadn't comprehended the fact that she was screaming until she felt one of Eli's cold hands clamping over her mouth, muffling her yelps of terror.

"Shut up." He hissed in her ear, his voice lacking the usual comforting affectionate that it normally held when directed her way, "Do you want someone to come out here and see us? See what happened? They'd send me off somewhere, someplace for crazy murderers! That's just because they don't know the whole story! What I just did was self-defense, Clare." He removed his hand from her mouth and used both of them to cup her cheeks. His eyes had softened and the smile on his face was desperate. "You believe me, right?"

"You - You didn't have to kill him, Eli!" Clare hiccupped, her body shaking as her knees gave out beneath her. The only thing that kept her from falling was his increasingly tight grip on her cheeks, his fingernails digging into her flesh and shooting ripples of pain throughout her body.

"I did this for you! For us! If I hadn't ended things now, he wouldn't have stopped trying to kill me. Or maybe he'd have just killed you instead, knowing how much pain it would cause me to live without you. Now we're both safe, together."

The words sounded so perfect in the current situation, right out of some romance novel. Clare wasn't dumb enough to fall for them, though, and it was just a tad bit insulting that he thought his innocent face could trick someone of her intelligence.

"I didn't know that we were still lying to each other, Eli." Clare mumbled, refusing to meet his eyes.

"Clare, don't hate -"

"I could never hate you." The genuine meaning of the words did nothing to stop the fear that ran through her body. He'd just killed a man right in front of her and she still loved him. She was in too deep, and it didn't look like she'd ever stop drowning. "You and I can go to Principal Simpson. We can tell him what happened, get you help. You're not a monster yet. You're just… lost."

Eli's puppy dog innocence faded away quicker than it came. His lips pulled back in a ferocious sneer as his fingernails dug even deeper, this time managing to draw blood, "You're not going anywhere, Blue Eyes."

He slammed her head back against the lockers, ignoring the shout of pain that left her lips. While he didn't particularly enjoy watching her hurt, it would all be over soon. She would see his side of things in due time. They always did.

Black dots began to spot Clare's vision. She could feel something wet run down the back of her neck. It took her a few seconds to realize that she was no longer smelling Fitz's blood, but her own instead. As the world around her began to fade, the last thing that the girl remembered was falling into Eli's sickeningly comforting arms.

As pathetic as she felt to admit it, she knew that he would take care of her.

* * *

><p>When Clare woke up, she managed to trick herself into thinking that the night's events had only been a terribly realistic nightmare.<p>

That all worked for a few seconds before she realized where she was. Eli had shoved her into the back of his hearse before driving away from the school, not even bothering to clean the blood that had now crusted to her neck. She could no longer lie to herself. Her boyfriend, sweet and sarcastic Elijah Goldsworthy, was a murderer.

Clare sighed bitterly. Her taste in men was truly pathetic. First she dated KC who ended up cheating with some blonde bimbo that she'd been stupid enough to call one of her best friends. Then she'd developed that little crush on Declan, simply because she liked the idea of sinking her teeth into his neck. Above all, though, Eli definitely took the cake. Never in her life had she pictured her true love to be a lunatic. Fate sure does work in mysterious ways.

She shook her head in disappointment with herself. She was currently being driven to who knows where by her psychotic boyfriend, and she was busy complaining about her love life? What kind of gifted student was she? Clare set to work on planning after that, hoping to whip up some kind of way to escape and find the police. Cute smirk or not, she wasn't going to go on some murderous rampage with him. She had morals, you know.

"You awake back there, _sleeping beauty_?" Eli called from the front seat.

Clare's eyes widened in absolute terror. So much for planning her great escape. In a last attempt to save herself from dealing with him right now, she tried to act unconscious again. She needed to spend this valuable time thinking of how she could escape his grasp, not exchanging witty banter with him. She really wasn't in the mood for that right now.

"Nice try." He snorted, "I heard you moving. You're going to have to try harder than that if you plan on going anywhere, anytime soon. Not that you have a chance against me."

Clare sat up in her seat, begrudgingly. She caught his eyes in the rearview mirror, only keeping his gaze for a few seconds before she turned away with a blush painting her cheeks. His eyes still made her shiver, but it wasn't the same as before. This shiver was that of fear.

"You tricked me into thinking that you loved me and I actually believed you." Clare mumbled, staring down her shaking hands.

"Tricked? Who said anything about me tricking you? Everything that I've ever said was completely genuine. I may be a _murderer,_" He said the word with extra bite, loving the way that it made her flinch, "but I'm not a liar."

"You disgust me."

"I thought we agreed that lying was only for people who have something to hide." Eli said, clicking his tongue in disapproval, "The only thing that disgusts you about this whole situation is that you'll always love me, no matter what I am. If anyone's the monster here, it's you."

"Were you always this cruel or am I just now opening my eyes enough to see it?"

Eli's grip on the steering wheel tightened, "If you think I'm already cruel, our definitions of the word must have come from two different dictionaries."

"You stabbed him in the neck, Eli!" Clare said, arms flailing for emphasis, "You're _crazy_!"

He slammed down on the breaks, the force of the impact sending Clare forward and against the back of the driver's seat. There was the sickening sound of her nose cracking and a painful sob escaping her lips, but then there was only silence. She looked out the window with her head tilted back, trying to stop the blood that was rapidly pouring from her nose and into her mouth. The coppery taste was almost enough to make her vomit, but she managed to hold down her lunch. For some reason, she figured that Eli wouldn't be too pleased with her if she puked in his car. While she no longer cared about making him happy, she knew that he would hurt her if she did something wrong. Even if his feelings were genuine – which was very unlikely – he didn't love her enough not to smack her across the face if she pissed him off.

Clare's eyes squinted, trying to make out something in the darkness. They couldn't be somewhere to populated if Eli had stopped the car in the middle of the road so suddenly. It looked like screaming for help wouldn't do her much good. Sadly, that was the only plan that she had at this point.

Eli whirled around in his seat, his eyes narrowed with such hatred that it made Clare choke. _What happened to him? _She'd always known that something was wrong with his mind, but she never suspected that he was truly this violent. He'd killed a man, and now she had no reason to believe that he wouldn't kill her, too. Maybe that's why they were on this dirt road in the middle of nowhere. He was going to shove a knife into her heart and then dispose of her body. No one would ever find her, or at least not until he wanted them to.

"No, no, _no_." He hissed, "Crazy? You – You actually think that I'm crazy? No. I'M NOT. I'M REALLY, REALLY NOT."

Clare pushed herself back against the seat, trying to put as much distance between them as possible, "Eli, you're scaring at me. Please. We can still go to the cops, tell them the whole story. You won't go to _jail, _I promise! They'll get you pills and send you someplace full of people that can help you. I want to get you help!"

Eli chuckled bitterly, "Help? Why? Because I'm… because I'm crazy? You think I'm crazy?"

Clare tried to think of an answer, but she had a feeling that almost anything that she could possibly say would send him over the edge. If she said yes, he'd scream in her face again. If she said no, he'd call her a liar. Nothing was going to make him happy. Maybe he just wanted an excuse to beat the shit out of her. From the way his fists were clenching, she had a feeling that she was right.

"ANSWER ME!"

"Please." She whispered.

He literally lunged on top of her, pinning her by the wrists to the backseat. He was so close, so close that she could feel his warm breathe ghosting over his face. No matter how much he absolutely terrified her at the moment, she still couldn't handle being in such close proximity to him. Her face turned bright red as he leaned down, his lips just barely brushing the shell of her ear. The grip on her wrists that had once been painful was reduced considerably now, but his fingernails still ripped at her skin.

"Answer me, Clare," He coaxed, his tone hypnotic and soft, "and don't you even _think _about lying."

"I want to fix you and I – I hate myself for it." Clare whimpered.

He fell back onto the seat, laughing like a hyena. Clare gulped mouthfuls of air, trying to put as much oxygen back into her lungs as she could. Just a few more seconds and he would have crushed her. She couldn't believe that he still managed to get such a reaction out of her. He was like some villain from a horror movie and yet he still made that unfamiliar warmth bubble in the pit of her stomach. She was sickened with herself.

Soon his maniacal laughter turned into a giggle, "Fix me, huh? Priceless. Absolutely priceless! You're too good, Edwards. You think that everyone out there has morals and a soul and that they can be saved with just a little bit of _compassion._" The grin of his face faded as he reached out and lifted her to her knees by her hair. She tried to cry out, but her throat was absolutely dry. "You're too late to save me. Give up while you're ahead."

She managed to squeak out a reply, "Are you going to…?"

"Going to what? Kill you? Eventually, yes, but not until I find the most appropriate way possible." He shrugged his shoulders lazily, "Call me a perfectionist, if you must. I just want your death to be special."

"Just let me go! I won't tell anyone!" She sobbed, surprised at the power in her voice.

He smiled a bit sadly, but she knew he was just putting on a show. People like him didn't have any real emotions. "I know you wouldn't. I really do."

"Then why can't I just be free?"

"Because I love you, Clare. Isn't it obvious?"

* * *

><p>an: I'd be surprised if any of you actually stuck around to this point. If you have, though, then thanks a bunch. It really means a lot to me. (:

'Til next time, duckies. ~


End file.
